Time to develop coastal resort Investors believe that the great investment opportunities for the second half of the decade lie in the resort real estate market.   Nguyen Nam Son, managing director of Vietnam Capital Partners, believes that beachfront resorts are one of the most profitable investment channels for the 2015-2020 period.  “There are over 50,000 beachfront resort apartments in Thailand, but such apartments are not available in Vietnam. And that is a great opportunity for investors for the next 5-10 years,” Son said. Son is confident about the strong rise of the market segment in the near future because of  the increasingly high income of Vietnamese which can be seen in the higher number of cars in circulation, the total length of highways and travelers’ spending. According to Son, Vietnam’s GDP of the next five years may reach the GDP gained by the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia in 2014, at $289 billion, $306 billion and $332 billion, respectively. The total length of highways (it is now 118 kilometers by the end of 2014) and number of cars are also expected to increase considerably in the next half of decade. There are 500,000 cars in circulation in HCM City, while the figure is believed to increase by five times in the next five years. The so called ‘car culture’ would take shape, in which city’s dwellers would travel out of HCM City in cars on weekend holidays. All these factors, according to Son, will encourage people to travel more to localities which are three driving hours from HCM City. And the ideal destination points for their trips are resorts on the seaside. An analyst cited official reports as saying that the number of domestic travelers has been increasing rapidly from 14.5 million in 2004 to 36 million in 2014. Meanwhile, the number of foreign travelers has been increasing from 2.7 million to 8 million a year. In 2013, a domestic traveler spent $53 a day on average, while a foreign traveler spent $96. However, domestic travelers are believed to spend $80 by 2020. They now tend to stay at 3-star hotels instead of 2-star hotels as previously, and more are expected to stay at 4-5-star hotels in the next five years. Reports also showed changes in investments of well-off Vietnamese. They began buying houses for their accommodations and stayed at 2-3 star hotels during traveling in 2005. Meanwhile, they began buying real estate for leasing and staying at 3-4 star hotels in 2015. Nguyen Dinh Trung, chair of Hung Thinh Real Estate, believes that the warming up of the resort real estate market is due to the new policy on allowing foreigners to own houses in Vietnam. DNSG